Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Dinesh is at it again. Yup he of the feather and VP Seller Experience. That is an interesting title. Note they don't say Good Seller Experience. He made an announcement on the 16th about legal gambling on eBay and another one on the 21st to remind sellers to do their chores before eBay turns on the Paperless Seller Experience.

It then took another week for eBay to turn it on. So what else is new? According to Scot Wingo, although he is very polite and sideways about it, it is not quite ready for prime time.

No he didn't actually say 'not ready for prime time', he didn't say "You have egg on your face, Sir" either, what he said, politely, is that there are ramifications to the policy eBay apparently hasn't thought about. I guess they didn't cover that in the MBA program. Scot said he had been talking to John McDonald (big chief eBay's Trust and Safety for the USA) who did not have an answer to the following question:

There is some confusion around international (eBay calls this cross border trade or CBT)- e.g. can I specifically mention in my USA listing that "for DE buyers I take x, y, z?" - assuming x/y/z are allowed in DE, but not in USA?

What a surprise!

Personally I could care less whether a buyer uses Google Checkout, mails me a check or Money Order or meets me at the local Starbucks with cash. Heck if they want to they can even use PayPal, but then I don't sell on eBay any more, so I can be the decider in my business. I like that, it is why I am not an employee drawing a paycheck.

3 comments:

Kevin_T
said...

I am surprised that John McDonald could not answer that question. The obvious answer to it should be that you abide by the rules of the site that the listing is placed on.

There is a rather important question that Ebay will not answer for me though: If I list my items on the Australian site where cheques and money orders are an acceptable form of payment, and accept those payment forms, will my auctions be stopped from showing to users on the American site who search internationally? It really is an important question for everyone who lists internationally on the other sites as it may mean that their items are not being shown to potential bidders, but I have not been able to find anyone else who particularly cares, or who can give an official answer to this question. (Wild guesses that don't apply to the rules of the site where the listing is made, not withstanding)

I'm very surprised that you've been unable to find others who have very deep rooted and vocal views about that question.

If you check out the BuildaSkill blog, you will see that it is exactly that type of question that they focus on constantly.

In particular checkout all the posts in the eBay UK category between Aug 20th and September 26th this year regarding seeking clarifications for non-UK shop holders and whether or not they would qualify for the then incoming new-BIN reduced fees.

Note at the end of that series, the massive backstabbing and deceipt that was enactioned by eBay UK Staff - Brutus and Cassius would have been jealous (they gave Caesar a poke in the ribs in comparison).

Note also all the similar questions to yours, all year, for global sellers listing on AU during the run up to the Ozzies abandoning the PayPal-only decision.

Being unable to find an official answer is nothing new, and your concern is shared by 100's of thousands of sellers around the world ... however, in mitigation of eBay Inc's lack of answers, they have this little election thingy on their minds right now - and we all know what Americans are like when it comes to election season, don't we?

@Gaz,Americans aren't any different from any other country's citizens when it's time to choose their leader. Personally, I think it's wonderful to have citizens so engaged in the process, since it does have so great an impact upon their lives. Though I will be glad when the election "season" is over and done with. All of the advertising is getting tiresome.

As for eBay, I'd love to see them just fold all the separate platforms together and have everyone list on one place and put working filters in search to allow users to filter by country or region. It would certainly save them money on infrastructure and management. I know there are probably issues that prohibit this, but that would be my ideal scenario - to let anyone in the world sell to anyone else in the world. Yeah, so I'm having a "shiny happy people holding hands" moment, LOL! A girl can dream, can't she?